Trisha Yearwood
Album: Let’s Be Frank
Release Date: 2018
Trisha Yearwood is best known for ’90s country anthems like “She’s In Love with the Boy” and “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl),” but on this release, she goes crooner and performs jazz standards made famous by Frank Sinatra. To emphasize the spirit of nostalgia, the album was produced at the same Hollywood studio where Sinatra recorded his hits.
The music is as familiar as it gets. As the first notes of “Witchcraft” emanate from the speakers, you are transported to a smoky Manhattan lounge. It could be any year, but your mind is telling you it’s 1952. The joint is classy, sophisticated, and not at all stuffy. Dim lighting hides the stains on the velvet lounge chairs. The men are wearing suits, but the ties are loose and they are smoking unfiltered cigarettes. A woman in a black fedora steps to the antique microphone. She’s an old friend, and you’ve never seen her here before. As she starts to sing, you realize this is not the same girl you knew back in Georgia.
The music is not surprising, but how well Trisha Yearwood fits the role is. Each track provides an opportunity for the fifty-five-piece orchestra to demonstrate their talent on a well-worn jazz standard, but Trisha’s vocals are the unquestionable star. She croons through familiar favorites like “Come Fly With Me” and “Over The Rainbow” before ending side A with a soulful version of “One For My Baby,” where she reminds us that nobody sings a drinking song with the authenticity of a country artist.
The next side delivers more of the same, featuring a lively rendition of “The Lady Is A Tramp,” which leads into the only original song on this album. “For the Last Time” is a love song co-written by Trisha Yearwood and her husband, Garth Brooks. Trisha opposed using it for this project, but fortunately, she lost that argument. The composition fits among the older songs and breathes originality into the well-worn and familiar.
Since I’ve advertised that these are the albums that define the Austin music scene, I feel I need to add a disclaimer to this album. It’s a stretch to connect Trisha Yearwood to Austin, but she was inducted into the ACL Hall of Fame and I was there to see it, so there’s that. She also gave Austin’s leading man, Matthew McConaughey, his first paid acting gig when he starred in the video for “Walkaway Joe,” but I know it’s a stretch. I just wanted to include the album, I never anticipated something this fun coming from a William’s Sonoma release, and all you audiophiles out there know how good jazz sounds on the turntable. If you want to give it a taste of Texas, play this album in tandem with The Wheel or Read My Lips.
Bending Branch Double Barrel Tannat
This album demands a drink that is familiar but surprising. In walks a dark, brooding wine from Texas: the Tannat. It’s a bold wine with lots of tannins. Like Trisha Yearwood performing jazz standards, it’s surprising in the best of ways.
The grape is not unique to Texas; it originated in Southern France before finding a hospitable region in South America, where it is thriving as the national grape of Uruguay. In Texas Tannat, the heat helps to tame the tannins and produce a softer wine that lends itself to being bottled as a single varietal, rather than being used as a component in red blends, as other regions typically do.
We are drinking the double barrel from Bending Branch. After aging in wine barrels it is finished with an additional four months of barrel aging. The bourbon barrels impart rich, buttery vanilla and caramel aromas and flavors, adding to the wine’s exceptional structure.
